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Topic: direct tv vs dish (Read 2559 times)

I would like to get your opinion on which on is better for home and for the rv i have direct tv now and not happy with the rv part a big hassle setting up a portable dish. Dish seems to be more rv friendly your thought?

Why? The only thing that might be more friendly is the fact you can use one of the portable automatic domes with Dish HD. Direct you need an oval dish to get Direct HD. Other than that setup will be no different. You still have to place a dish and aim it at the correct bird

First you need to decide what programming you want to view and how much you're willing to pay for that programming. If you like the way DirecTV displays the Guide and it has the programs you want to view, then stay with it. If you have favorite programs you record, then you'll also want to stay with it for that reason. Then you need to decide whether you want standard digital TV or high definition HDTV because the dishes are shaped differently.

Learning how to aim at the correct "bird" takes a while but there are aids now such as the app Satellite AR which uses your cell phone camera to tell you (1) where the satellite you want is located and (2) whether there's an obstruction such as a tree that will prevent you from seeing it. Of course, if you want HDTV it will cost more and you'll need a larger dish that has a different shape. The easiest method of all is an automatic rooftop antenna to which we eventually graduated. You push one button to Find and another one to Stow. Nice! But of course that also costs more. As the others have said, there's no difference in pointing the dish between two providers except that their satellites are in different places in the sky.

By the way, Satellite AR is neat for finding things like the international space station. Last year it went right over our house and the app told us the spot where it would start crossing our viewing area.

I'm doing some research now. I like that with dish you can pay as you go. Just watched a video on the Winegard Pathways 2. The video shows the unit self locating both eastern and western satellites. The gentleman was able to select his state location right on the screen with his remote and then the unit located three satellites. You can run 2 boxes with the one unit so we can watch both tvOS at once. The cost of just the dish was 449 which seemed reasonable compared to the fancier automatic ones. However you must be stationary and it must be level to work.

Anyone have practical experience with it? At home I'm a Direct tv consumer however the price has gotten high and you can only " order " 6 month service and not go month to month like Dish. love to hear some realities as this is my first Rv and portable satellite service!Thanks,

We've used Dish for both our RV and vacation cottage for several years. We have a pay-as-you-go "Flex" account, and use two multi-tuner Hopper with Sling DVR receivers. For the dish, we use a portable tripod mounted triple LNB oval dish that's been modified for a no tools needed setup. Using the DishPointer.com Android app, it rarely takes me more than 15 minutes to set up and aim the dish to receive three satellites at once, and usually less than that. By switching LNB's, we can use either the eastern or western arc satellites for more aiming options on treed sites. Changing service locations with Dish to receive the local stations where we are at the time only takes a few minute chat session online. We've frequently switched locations daily, and even twice a day on occasion. DirecTV used to frown on frequent service location changes, but I've heard they may have gotten better about that.

I'm doing some research now. I like that with dish you can pay as you go. Just watched a video on the Winegard Pathways 2. The video shows the unit self locating both eastern and western satellites. The gentleman was able to select his state location right on the screen with his remote and then the unit located three satellites. You can run 2 boxes with the one unit so we can watch both tvOS at once. The cost of just the dish was 449 which seemed reasonable compared to the fancier automatic ones. However you must be stationary and it must be level to work.

Anyone have practical experience with it? At home I'm a Direct tv consumer however the price has gotten high and you can only " order " 6 month service and not go month to month like Dish. love to hear some realities as this is my first Rv and portable satellite service!Thanks,

The Pathway X2 is a good choice in a portable dome style automatic dish for Dish service. Be aware that it only works with the VIP series of receivers though, and can only "see" one satellite at a time. For two receivers, both TV's must be watching channels that are on the same satellite. That can rule out one TV watching network programs on local stations while the other TV watches a non-local channel like CNN, Lifetime, etc., since the locals are not likely to be on the same satellite as the so-called "cable channels".

I second that if you are already a Direct member then take home unit with you on the road. Keep in mind Direct is talking about eliminating satellite TV by 2020. See Sarge's post on this forum.

If that were remotely true, then pray tell why would they invest in new satelites? Let alone the money to develop newer receiver technoligy. If and that is a big IF Direct AT&T actually did that they would instantly loose thousands if not millions of subscribers that for one reason or another cannot get good enough high speed internet to support streaming.Now, dont go off half cocked, yes, I understand AT&T is pushing streaming Direct service and in fact offers it basically free, at least free data for AT&T/Directv customers. But still, unless and until they can offer really high speed reliable data to 100% of the country it simply cant work as a business model.

We have Dish and the Pathway X2 and VIP 211k receiver. Very happy with the ease of setup and the ability to move the antenna to where I can find a view of the satellites. The X2 comes with 25 feet of coax but I have used 100' with no problem.

If that were remotely true, then pray tell why would they invest in new satelites? Let alone the money to develop newer receiver technoligy. If and that is a big IF Direct AT&T actually did that they would instantly loose thousands if not millions of subscribers that for one reason or another cannot get good enough high speed internet to support streaming.Now, dont go off half cocked, yes, I understand AT&T is pushing streaming Direct service and in fact offers it basically free, at least free data for AT&T/Directv customers. But still, unless and until they can offer really high speed reliable data to 100% of the country it simply cant work as a business model.

I recall DTV launched a new satellite back in early 2015, but nothing since. Did I miss one?

In the old days this response was much longerToday:Dish: With a SINGLE receiver, works with Domes or with Dish type antenna(Selected models of domes) some domes work while driving so you can DVR showsMultiple receivers, however, need multiple domes to work properly since a dome can only see ONE of the three satellites at a time.

DirecTV works with domes or dishes, but DirecHDTV does not, and many channels are now only HD.

Beyond that.... Look at the packages.. Dish has NASA, Direc is more into sports.

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Nothing adds excitement like something that is none of your businessMy Home is where I park it.

I'm doing some research now. I like that with dish you can pay as you go. Just watched a video on the Winegard Pathways 2. The video shows the unit self locating both eastern and western satellites. The gentleman was able to select his state location right on the screen with his remote and then the unit located three satellites. You can run 2 boxes with the one unit so we can watch both tvOS at once. The cost of just the dish was 449 which seemed reasonable compared to the fancier automatic ones. However you must be stationary and it must be level to work.

Anyone have practical experience with it? At home I'm a Direct tv consumer however the price has gotten high and you can only " order " 6 month service and not go month to month like Dish. love to hear some realities as this is my first Rv and portable satellite service!Thanks,

My husband bought me a Dish, the one that finds the satellite on its own. Works great! My in laws have Dish at home, so we just added our 2 new receivers to their account and it's only $7 a month for service!! Hubby doesn't seem to mind climbing up to the roof every weekend to put up there, I would prefer he mount it up there permanently but if we're in a bad spot he likes the freedom to be able to move it. Only con is sometimes it takes longer than 10 minutes to get started but overall it's been a wonderful addition to our rv life.

I just got off phone with Direct TV rep. I had already added an extra receiver in the guest room that isn't connected to my Genie system so I could use it in our travels (soon to retire) However, after calling today, I learned that I would lose service to my home once I called to activate the "on the go' service wherever we are --- that's not going to work for me. We have an elderly dog so we typically have a house/dog sitter to stay at our home while we will are gone. Am I understanding the rep correctly? My next purchase was to be the Winegard 2go - (or whatever it is called) so we could use it besides when travelling - such as going to grandkids house where they may not have a package to watch college football (Roll Tide!) But I would still like to maintain my home DirectTv without restrictions as it can continue recording our "Must Have" shows to watch once we return home.

Am I missing something ?? Yes I'm only paying $7 for the extra stand alone receiver right now but if everything else is shut down at home with no service -- that makes no sense Help please - what do you do ??

You'd lose the local channels at home, but retain the others, since you're still paying for those receivers left behind. I've done as you have with an extra home receiver that I use for the RV and I don't change anything in my service while on the road. While on the road I still have everything except local channels, which I can get over the air in most places, and my local channels continue to work at home, along with the rest.

In point of fact, though, I still have the Denver local channels (my home stuff) most anywhere in Colorado and a little beyond -- the "spot beam" for locals is more or less a cone that, at least out here, covers a fair sized area.

My problem with Dish is that they have contract disputes with the channels they carry every couple of years. Seems there is always the threat of losing your favorite channels/programs.

All of the carriers have contract disputes from time to time. DirecTV for instance, lost 33 Hearst network stations affecting 39 states for a time last January. No matter which carrier you choose, there will be contract dispute outages...

I would like to get your opinion on which on is better for home and for the rv i have direct tv now and not happy with the rv part a big hassle setting up a portable dish. Dish seems to be more rv friendly your thought?

I too just dumped the big bulky dish for directv in my TT. I just ordered the King quest. I called Both King and Winegard first and the only option for my newer HR 54 receiver is the King Quest. I got it off Amazon 344.00 King wanted almost double that. They say it will get me sat 101 and no HD, which is good for me. I hope its easy to use. I would spend upwards of an hour each camping trip trying to get the old oval dish alligned and tweeked, and never had great results. I found this also you might find usefull. Its a satellite and channel list from Directv.

What model of king west did you get, I have not found them that cheap... we are just about ready to dump our dish too.. we have old receiver, I need to call but think it will work. Model -h21-200 We use direct tv.

I too just dumped the big bulky dish for directv in my TT. I just ordered the King quest. I called Both King and Winegard first and the only option for my newer HR 54 receiver is the King Quest. I got it off Amazon 344.00 King wanted almost double that. They say it will get me sat 101 and no HD, which is good for me. I hope its easy to use. I would spend upwards of an hour each camping trip trying to get the old oval dish alligned and tweeked, and never had great results. I found this also you might find usefull. Its a satellite and channel list from Directv.

What model of king west did you get, I have not found them that cheap... we are just about ready to dump our dish too.. we have old receiver, I need to call but think it will work. Model -h21-200 We use direct tv.

To be more specific. I called both companies and the only one that had a dish for my receiver HR54 was King. However, with your receiver H21 they have a few that will work as well as Winegard has some. Here is Kings compatibility list. https://kingconnect.com/support/receivers/

Winegard has the Carryout G2+ that will work with Directv as well.

Pricing on Ebay and Amazon had the Carryout g2+ a little more expensive than King.

I luckily found a factory refurbished unit on Amazon for 344.00. It got delivered yesterday. When I called King they said I can use that dish and I will need a SWM 8 with power to get the HR 54 to work. The SWM 8 cost me another 10.00 on EBay.

You should just need the dish and not the SWM 8. IF you search the internet and both Ebay and Amazon you will find something at a pretty good price compared to new.

This topic gets quite a bit of discussion... completely understandable... RV's and Sat/TV were made for each other. At the same time technology is changing quickly these days and will probably continue to change, perhaps even more rapidly. The economics of this is changing rapidly as well. It wasn't that long ago that we had OTA TV, a few ads and network programming. Now we pay hundreds of $$$ for hundreds of channels that most folks never even watch. Plus the advertising has gone ballistic, even exponential so we pay even more for channels with far less advertising. Now of course, there are streaming channels with most of the content that OTA or Sat/TV provide but the streaming options are far less expensive in many cases. Witness Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc, etc, etc. Something has to give, we cannot watch or engage with all this stuff... at least we can't. You can even watch multiple channels at the same time. Maybe what this leads to could be that Dish Vs. Direct comprises the proverbial "tip of the iceberg"? Maybe there's no need to choose anymore, just flip a coin and you'll get some huge percentage of all the content you could possibly watch. One path forward that more and more people are using consists of downloading gigantic files of content that you can watch when you choose to watch, if you choose to watch and often fast forward through the rampant advertising and commercials. For instance, you can watch the NBA finals in half the time if you're willing to watch it on a delayed basis and skip the advertising. HD makes the images sharper, no doubt about that and 4K is right around the corner, even more HD. On a different note, if you "upgrade" to the Directv Genie receivers, with the SWM system, you get even more options but setup gets much trickier. This trend may be the reason that "live performances" have become so popular these days. And, a good book or two.